Crystal River business owner reflects on Helene one year later

CRYSTAL RIVER, Fla. — Citrus County was among the areas where communities were hit hard by Hurricane Helene. Businesses along Citrus Avenue were inundated by several feet of storm surge. Kane’s Cattle Co. was one of them.

“The last time you guys were here, everything was turned upside down,” said Morgan Sundberg, who co-owns the restaurant with her husband, Kason Sundberg.

That’s not an exaggeration. A Spectrum News crew first visited the restaurant on Sept. 27, 2024. The water had receded, but storm surge tipped a huge walk-in cooler and freezer on their sides and carried away the cow figure that sits outside.

“All right, Bessie, you come on now. Time to go back to the barn,” Morgan says in a video she shared with Spectrum News, where she can be seen dragging the cow back to Kane’s patio.

Then, there was the damage inside. Sundberg said there was nothing to do but take it in stride.

“Helene just, she came in strong, and she wasn’t giving way for anything,” she said.

Sundberg said flood panels worked well to a point but couldn’t stop the several feet of water that flooded Citrus Ave. Kane’s ended up getting even more water inside than during Hurricane Idalia the year before.

“I was watching a live Ring door camera,” Sundberg said. “I could see that we maybe had an inch of water inside while I couldn’t even see the trees and the shrubs on our patio. They were completely submerged. But then, I switched to audio, and I could hear it lapping over the top of our flood panels.”

Walking down Citrus Avenue on Friday, “open” signs could be seen in windows, and customers were going in and out of businesses. Kane’s is open, as well, but Sundberg said it took six and a half months of work to make that happen.

“We did have to, from this high up, cut out all the drywall, pull out all the insulation,” she said, gesturing to a point several feet off the ground. “I could literally wring the water from the insulation.”

She said one of the biggest challenges was shortages of equipment and materials. Repairs were also made with possible future flooding in mind, including replacing ripped out drywall with a water-resistant material.

“We decided to go with this so that if, in the future, we get water in the building again, we simply remove this, replace whatever needs to be replaced behind it, and we can smack it right back up there,” Sundberg said.

While the hope is that day won’t come anytime soon, Morgan said she doesn’t stress when it comes to hurricane season.

“I’ve kind of gotten to the point where I will ask, ‘Is it Idalia? Is it Helene? Or does it not touch any of those?’” she said. “Unless it’s going to be Helene level, it doesn’t really get me excited.”